Savatage - Hall of the Mountain King

Blood hungry psychopath.

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but didn’t you comment multiple times that you want your players rather roleplay than rolling dice, play their characters and not the character builds they created and that systems like PF2e are too videogamey?

But to quench your thirst about my experiences: I am playing and DMing TTRPGs for about 10 years now. My groups are mostly running PF1e, Call of Cthulhu and Numenera, but for one shots we also like to try smaller systems like Dungeon Crawl Classics, Paranoia or Savage Worlds. I play with and DM for veterans and new players alike. I would say that I know one or two things about this matter, but who knows.

No matter what system we run, we never really have a problem with the rules and there is always room for fun and engaging RP. To me the overall critique in this thread sounds like a homemade problem on the DM side of things. You don’t have to know and use all the rules a system is offering you (looking at you, Pathfinder), but it’s really nice to know that there are rules for almost anything. And if you get the feeling that you have to fill the gaps with homebrew rules too often, then maybe the system isn’t the right one for what you are going for in your campaign or maybe you have to adjust your style of DMing.

This year for example I started a new PF1e campaign with people that never played a TTRPG before and they love it. I was afraid that this system could be too much for inexperienced players but they already get creative with the rules in combat and they engage in serious RP. They reached level 6 and can’t wait to develop the stories of their characters further.

But calling a watered down and noob friendly system like D&D5e being too complicated and rule heavy? Or calling a system like Pathfinder not a true RPG? Idk man. Maybe TTRPGs aren’t your thing if you really think that or maybe your approach at DMing is fundamentally flawed.

Let me get this straight: you don’t like crunchy rule sets, you don’t like character builds and progression and you don’t like rolling dice? Sounds to me like you don’t like TTRPGs.

I mean you can just read a story to your players or skip the whole tabletop part altogether and do an improv theatre session.